The Night Rider

Chapter 34 - Ingradia

Nivara felt as if she had just stepped back into Hellgrind. 

Her mind was a sea of fog, of distant memories locked away in endless fleeting moments her consciousness could barely keep up with. The taste of Silvertongue had marred those memories into a blur.

The cloying heat. The endless cold. The continuous change of temperature that repeated endlessly against the cramped, metal prison. Nivara hated small spaces, the clench in her throat at the lack of oxygen and the feeling of constantly being trapped long after she escaped from the foul place.

But what made it worse was the pain. 

It wasn't a dull throb of annoyance but the constant striking of a thousand needles plunging into her skin. She had known the Lockbind was devastating firsthand but the one she had created with Kamikaze seemed like a mild inconvenience compared to now.

At least it gave her a break with every word she tripped up but the stark change of barely being able to take a breath without a jolt of agony searing through her mind was enough to make anyone collapse into madness.

'Shut your mouth and let me help her.'

She could hear the blurred voices of the Timekeeper and Charmer arguing but she could barely bring herself to open her eyes let alone conjure any strength to move. So she stayed frozen as if surrounded by her own Trait, completely overwhelmed by the Lockbind and the darkness of her own mind.

It was completely blank. Devoid of emotion, feeling or thought as if completely numb to it all. It was brisk like the cold winter chill of her ice but around her arms there was no cloak. Her eyes free of her treasured mask for the first time in years. She was alone against the storm she created and there was nothing to save her.

Slowly Nivara made her way out of the void, step by step, inch by inch she trekked alone until she saw a great light. A shining silvery glow that warmed her face and made her want to grasp it. But it was too bright to look directly at and soon it tried to snuff out her entire existence like an exorcist banishing a soul from the mortal plane.

"That's enough."

A voice broke through the light as it forged into a key and fled before surrounding the void in a dull glow of blue. No storm to hold her back. Just a mirror image of a young girl several years younger than she but the glint in her eye was more than enough to confirm her true nature. A demon.

"You've forgotten, Nivara Cross." 

Nivara rubbed her eyes, still without her faithful cloak and mask as she tried to process the situation. Mist rose without her command, surrounding her eerily as her younger self lingered closer and closer, causing Nivara to stumble backwards in shock. This wasn't just any demon.

It was an Ingradia demon. 

Undetectable by Trait the rare but crafty shapeshifters normally lure their targets through mental manipulation and gradually infect their souls. But they hadn't been seen in years since the Divide locked them out of travelling down from Hellgrind. 

Compared to Truants, they were barely human and normally took the form of various creatures within the countries they dwelled in. Such as a fire breathing nymph dragon or a scale covered Havalog demon. But this demon, this demon was human and that was terrifying. It meant they were strong enough to take a corporeal form. Her form.

The other Nivara was like a mirror image of her younger self. A wanderer bound in torn scraps of clothing, gripping a bloodied staff splintered and covered in sand. The swaths of blue cloth were woven together with azure flax, the flower of Caldor and a scrap had been collected from every Mist Maiden she had turned to dust.